Today, I continue my series of posts where I share an interview that Pictures and Picturgoer magazine did with Harry Houdini:

“WILL you step this way, please?” The call-boy of a popular London music-hall beckoned to PICTUR ES representative, and hurried along endless corridors to a dressing room where reposed the man whose name is a household word the world over—Harry Houdini—the Handcuff King. Repose may seem an inadequate term to use in connection with this live, active and almost restless personality, but it is accurate. Houdini works hard, plays hard, and rests hard.

We talked of many things; of life and hopes and ambitions, of business and of romance.

• His future film plans.
• His pet superstition.
• His greatest happiness.
• His fertile brain.
• His pleasure in films.

His future film plans.

Houdini has left his picture work for a few months, only because he had an old music hall contract to fill—that is why he is in London now, but he is going back to it, and has already on hand scenarios for four more films. “I intend to devote myself to the film profession for good when my variety contract is concluded,” he informed me,” and shall take several English players back to America with me to play in my future pictures. The studio work interests me immensely, and I’ve made up my mind to never fake an effect; I never have yet, on stage or screen, and I never shall.

“There is an aeroplane stunt in The Grim Game, my Famous Players-Lasky film, which you will see here next autumn, which was an unrehearsed accident, and the chances were a million to one that all the players would meet their death—yet no one was injured.

“I am absolutely devoid of fear, through keeping my nerves in perfect order, and though I had to risk my life several times daily while making The Grim Game, I never had a single nervous moment. Strangely enough, the few accidents I have ever had have been caused at times when danger was at a minimum.

Source:

• Picture and Picturegoers March 6, 1920